Today is …

September 9th, 2012, 01:16

… pibbur's first day int the US.

And he hates it. 34 degrees C (no, I refuse to translate into that … other temperature scale) in Houson - he didn't know such temperatures existed (outside the sun). It's a bit better in Baltimore, but, considering he regards anything above 20 as hellish hot…

But apart from that? He's having a great time!!!!

*switching to pibbur controller mode*

I came over yesterday. The trip from Frankfurt, Germany took nearly 11 hours, but actually being on an A380was very pleasant indeed. And I had it nearly too mydelf - ok, there were 99 other people on board, but it's a plane with a 600 passenger capacity, so it wasn't very crowded. Nice. I have told you before, I don't really believe that those things can fly, and take-off added support to that assumption. Compared to a Boing 737 who almost jumps into air, this baby crawls upwards sloooowly. Seats were comfortable, each with a tv-screen with a huge selection of movies and programs. And quite good food.

Passing through immigration control and customs was a bit disappointing. I had expected hours waiting in queues and fierce looking, highly suspicious entry guards. In stead he only wanted to know how long I was staying and why on earth I had come to the us. I chose to tell him the truth, and not try to bribe him. Then he wieshed me a pleasant stay.

So, I had more than two hours with nothing to do before boarding my plane to Baltimore. Trust me, there are actually quite good american beers.

I arrived in Baltimore at 05 am Norwegian time (11 pm local time), and went straight to bed, a wise choice since I had been awake for 26 hours. No real jet lag problems.

My meetings don't start untyil tomorrow, so I've spent the day shopping with my two female colleagues who are also attending the meetings. They mostly looking for clothes, me looking for .. THINGS. I got myself a dr. Who coffee mug. And some gargloyle figurines. And some other things, most of them at half the price I would have to pay back home. Did I tell you there are good American beers?

Haven't talked to any republicans as far as I know, although I am a bit unsure about Bubba at his grill an bar in Houston. But he was a really nice person to talk to, so maybe they are not as dangerous as I've thought (the republicans).

Other things happening today:

1331: Stephen Uroš IV Dušan (U4) declared himself king of Serbia, a move possibly not supported by his until-then-king-of-Serbia-Stephen-Uros-III-father. However, said father was in prison at the time, the result of U4' actioans after a fallout between themr. Which was probably a wise choice, since HIS father again (Stephen not-Uros) sent U3 to Constantinople to be (only partially successfully) blinded after they had a fallout. I'm not sure why said procedure could not be performed in Serbia, and why big Stephen chose to outsource it, but at least it proves the benefits of international cooperation. U4 remained in business until 1355 of natural causes (war), far longer than most roman emperors.

1514: Poland pwned Russia, only to be pwned by a few Swedes exactly 241 years later.

1888: Start of football league matches in the UK.
1951: End of WWW.
1966: Start of Star Trek.
1967: End of Steam in North East of England. Still going strong in the rest of the world.

Still having a great time. Everything is big around here. I attended a group session today, in meeting room 342, numbered from 301 to 355, and that was only the third floor. My hotel room is large, my dinner plates are large… Everything is big around here.

Except for the toilets. A word of warning: I won't talk about naughtyu or seedy things here, but I will touch upon bodily functions.

Toilets are small. The width and depth of them are adequate, but the height, the height is only half of what I'm used to. At least in (the bathroom of) my hotel room, haven't examined others. Now this poses a problem, because when I stand there doing my thing (not the big one, I usually sit down for the big one), there's a bit more distance to cover, and therefore a slight but statistically significant increased risk of misplacing a drop or two, which is embarrassing. Now, every male knows that draining your bladder from a standing position is a carefully controlled activity, involving highly precise hand-eye (or eye-hand) coordination to decide and maintain the correct position and direction of the bladder draining device. In addition we need to make sure that the physiological process of emptying the bladder itself, involving contracton of the muscles in the bladder wall (the detrusor), aided by a measurable increase in abdominal pressure, and combined with appropriate relaxation of the sphincters at the bladder outlet, take place at the correct moment in time, not too soon, and not too late (unless your are absolutely certain that no one will examine your underwear). Also remember that ejecting what is mostly water involves action-reaction forces (rocket science), and removal of mass from the anterior parts of your body, all of which will affects balance, thereby increasing the workload of your cerebellum (which already is busy handling the above mentioned hand-eye coordination). Thankfully, with training this becomes an automated process, so that we may spend our time writing messages or drawing on adjacent surfaces. But this only works if everything is where it's supposed to be. I don't know why the americans do this, but for all practical purposes, this is an attack on european males, not necessarily intended, it may be the result of ignorance, but still an attack.

Now I'm sure that there are female readers of the watch who ask: Why not sit down? This is of course an impertinent question that doesn't deserve and answer, but you'll get it anyway: BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE TO. IT'S ABOUT EVOLUTION OF THE SPECIES!! So there!

End of bodily function part.

The meeting I'm attending is this one: Sept. 2012 Annual Plenary and Working Group Meeting It's about how to exhange information between a multitude of health care software solutions, which happens to be my field of work. It's the first time I attend this meeting, so I've got this pink (I didn't select the color) tag identifying me as a "first time attendee", which make everybody come over and say hi and werlcom. Plus I have the privilege of interrupting any conversation or speech asking questions. Very nice.

Also, the hotel claimed they were excited to hear that I planned to stay at the place (don't know what they'll say when I'm leaving). So yes, I'm having a great time.

You might think that language would be a barrier, since americans don't speak English, but, like Australians (we have those here too), something derived from English. But this hasn't been a problem. I understand what they say, they sometimes understand what I say (which, to be honest, largely depends on the accuracy of my pronounciation of words), and if not there's always sign language. As long as I don't extend my middle finger.

Did I mention that good american beers exist?

Other things that happpened today:

2008: The Large Hadron Collider was powered up for the first time. Few things compares to this (despite the event I may cover 9 days from now).

pibbur who plans on going out into the city this evening, shared by 163 googles.

PS: OK, if you absolutely want it, there are a couple of other things I clould mention, like US losing a Basketball match (1972), Gibraltar deciding to stay british (1967). And Switzerland joining the UN (2002). And the Nyon Conference addressing hardware piracy (1937). DS.

Yeah American Beer has gotten a lot better in a way - there has been an explosion of excellent craft/micro breweries and regionally available beers are often quite good. The problem is that this mostly has not translated to the American beer that is available globally so telling someone in the UK for example that good American beer does exist is pretty useless because they're unlikely to be able to find very much of it unless they come for a visit. So sadly the global face of American beer is still crap like Budweiser and Coors.

Of those more likely to be available nationwide and even internationally, my recommended labels would include:
Flying Dog (their imperial stout is quite good)
Highland Brewery (particularly their Gaelic Ale)
Dogfish Head (the 90 minute IPA is a good one)
Stone Brewery (Arrogant Bastard Ale in particular)
Russian River (Pliny the Elder)

Also, BeerAdvocate.com can help you find some decent ones though their topmost picks can be harder to locate. They do seem to like many of the offerings from Russian River, Founders, Bell's, and Stone though.

1941: the launch of SS Patrick Henry, the first of the so called liberty ships (a class of cargo ships) built by the US during WW2. In total 2571 of these were built by 18 us. shipyards between 1941 and 1945, "easily the largest number of ships produced to a single design" (Wikipedia). Quite a feat!!

1998: the launch of google. Also quite a feat.

pibbur who observes that "GNU" is a recursive acronyme for "GNU's Not Unix", and is worried because there are 4 times as many googles for "pibbur" and "republican" than for "pibbur" and "democrat"

… a day in Chicago. And a day when pibbur has walked and walked and talked to people selling general vendor neutral archive systems (VNA) for every type of image taken at hospitals. His feet are aching, but not as much as they should because he, from a very cleverly position vendor, bought a pair of soles-to-put-inside-his-shoes which were . absloutely fabulous. He also bought a tie. It's 30 years since he last did that, and about the same number of years since he wore one. But this tie was decorated with MRI scans of the knee. Unfortunately none of them showed any sign of pathology, but still a very nice tie. Which he's not going to wear. *shivers*

Other things
1487: Lizzie (not of the Borden genus) answered the question who's queen.
1874: The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873. Who's president?
1905: A dane enters Norway to answer the question: Who's king?

— “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

You know, at a radiology conference with tens of thousands participants, there are bound to be a vendor or two showing off things they'd like to sell. Quite a few of those being MRI scanners. Now, your average MRI scanner consists of a fairly narrow tunnel in which to put the patient, an electromagnet cooled by liquid helium to make the circuits super-conductive, and a lot of noise from the radio-waves we insist on sending to the patient (otherwise there wouldn't be any images). But the technique has evolved. Now we've got open MRIs in stead of tunnel. We've got MRI's with permanent magnets needing no helium. And they can be plugged into your regular 110/220V power outlets. Image quality won'tbe as good, but then, I you've got $1.000.000 to spare you could get your own scanner, and if you paid a guy for 1 week of configuration you might even get it running.

One of the machines I saw could even tilt the patient, so you could take images in a standing position (which actually could be quite useful). They even tried to put a person upside down in it to see if that added something to the diagnostic possibilities. It did, but the person we spoke to said you shouldn't do that with a real patient. My question is: Why not?

nother thing that caught my interst was this: Whenever a technician is in the same room as you when they xray you, he/she is covered by a coat with lead. One thing to say about these: they're ugly. No more. Now you get them form fitting and in bright colors, so you might be tempted to wear one during your evening walk. No bikinis, however so at the moment they won't be hyour favourite beach outfit.

In 1295, the first elected representatives from Lancashire are called to attend what later became known as "The Model Parliament". Now, what is it about Lancashire that requires special mentioning?

1839: the American Statistical Association is founded. 80 years later the WP (whatever that is) of the red sox were 48.2%.

1934: Bank robber Baby Face Nelson dies in a shoot-out with the FBI. Wasn't there a weird-american-sports athlete called something like that?

1971: The Soviet space program's Mars 2 orbiter releases a decent module. Which crashed. Come to think of it - it might have been a descent module. Which crashed.

2001: There's hydrogen on Osiris.

pibbur who hasn't seen a patient for more than 12 years, and who has noticed a distinct and permanent smell of vanilla in his hotel and also outside his hotel. And who therefore wonders if Chicago is some kinde of vanilla city? Like Baltimore is all about crab cakes?

Originally Posted by pibbur who
pibbur who hasn't seen a patient for more than 12 years, and who has noticed a distinct and permanent smell of vanilla in his hotel and also outside his hotel. And who therefore wonders if Chicago is some kinde of vanilla city? Like Baltimore is all about crab cakes?

Vanilla can be used as a cleaning agent from what I understand, so the question that comes to my mind is - "what are they hiding?"

I know more about common household cleaning agents than I want to or need to thanks to my mother-in-law, who is the MacGyver of stain removal.

… another day in Chicago, and a day when pibbur have learned two things.

First of all, after having talked to many vendors, he realizes that a VNA (Vendor Neutral Archive for storing images) is not necessarily a VNA, but what we call a VNA.

Secondly: his years as a volleyball player was years well spent. For some reason, which he won't elaborate on (no, it had nothing to do with achohol) pibbjur stumbled while walking. Before hitting ground level, he lowered his chest, extended his neck and flexed his knees, and gently let his arms absorve the chinetic energy. Therefor no harm done, whith one exception: his left Achilles tendon which was already a bit inflamed did not adapt particularly well to said event, and is significantly more angry now. Shame on it. Fortunately it didn't rupture, which is always a good thing. OTOH, being surrounded with radiology equipment, especially ultrasound devices, a precise diagnosis could easily be obtained (pibbur knows how a ruptured tendon looks on ultrasound)

For some reason Wikipedia insists that it's still yesterday. But I'll give you this one, which actually doesn't have anything to do with today (if you pardon my french)

loading…

pibbur who tends to cough if he tries what this lady does

PS. Some information about VNA's: The main thing is that a (proper) VNA will let us store images and access them in whatever way we like, independent of who provides the storage. If we for instance wanted to change our PACS system, a VNA would allow us to do so without having to copy/move the images to another storage (very time consuming when you've stored around 10 million examinations). In addition it allows us to store whatever type of images we want, not only xrays. It's a very useful thing. But it's a fairly new concept in healthcare, which means we have a lot of work to do in order to find the optimal solution for the hospitals in our region. DS.